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Apple Businesses

iMovie For Free 73

Posted by Hemos from the go-and-grab-it dept.
Graymalkin writes: "Apple has finally released iMovie (the really easy video editor) for the non-iMac DV customers; the best part is that it's free. You can get it over at iMovie's Web site. I've used demos of this package and compared to professional packages like Premiere it really packs a punch. You need OS 9 and at least 64 megs of RAM (unless you want to do Web quality video, then 64 is fine). It's nice to see Apple responding to their customers (like myself) who wanted iMovie but didn't want to go out and buy an iMac to get it. fnord. "
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iMovie For Free

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  • iMovie 2000 = dekstop publishing 1984 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes, this software is low-end, but it gets people doing video! This software is -SO- easy to use you don't even need a manual (but take a peek at the built-in help file). I just finished editing a 15 minute video from a vacation I took in Eastern Europe -- complete with narration, musical soundtrack and credits. Total production time: about 4.5 hours. Considering that traditional video usually takes about 1 hour per minute, I'd say this is great. While this video isn't going to win any awards, it looks fabulous and family/friends will enjoy it. It works superbly with a beige G3 and Mac OS 8.6 so don't let the requirements fool you. I also have the OrangeMicro dual FireWire/USB card and it's stellar.

  • I'm sure Apple named this deliberately to confuse us old Dragon owners (yeah, and Tandy Coco owners too). I guess the chances of a release working on an old 64K computer are slim though, eh? Did they need some agreement with Microware for the name?

    In a similar vein, "Mac OS X" - was this deliberately named to confuse users of the X Window System? :)

  • Who was responsible for the decision to make iMovie arbitrarily unavailable? Apple.

    Who uses a proprietary, non-supported, non compatible video format that "breaks the web" for a good few of us? Apple.

    Apple "breaks the Web"? Hardly. The only format that doesn't "break the Web" is MPEG, and it's non-supported too. ASF and RM are both proprietary, and neither of those settle for breaking just the Web; they'll go after your computers too if their respective player apps are any indication.

    In terms of open, compatible, supported formats, let's take a look. QuickTime's format is open, actually. All the documentation you could possibly want is there Apple may not have Open-Sourced its own implementation of the format, but that is irrelevant; the format is right out there for you to use.

    Or are you talking about codecs? You should know that most of QuickTime's codecs don't belong to Apple at all; they couldn't Open-Source them even if they wanted to. There are exceptions, of course, and you can find Open-Source implementations of all of them.

    Anyway, let's move on to "supported." Who the hell are you looking for support from? While Apple may be behind in the streaming area, it's still far ahead of the other major formats in terms of support in all other areas, including content creation, editing, and distribution. MPEG is catching up in the distribution area (and that's a Very Good Thing) but not in the others, where it not only isn't catching up but shouldn't be. MPEG was made for distribution and streaming, and the tradeoffs made in the creation of the format make it extremely difficult, if not outright impossible, to edit in any sort of practical matter. And if you can't edit it easily, then it's a lousy capture format; what's the point of capturing a movie, losing quality while converting it to an editable format, and then losing more quality converting it back to MPEG? And yes, I know there are cards which caprute direct to MPEG, and even software that allows for simple editing tasks, but I have yet to hear anything but complaints about this, especially editing (which must, incidentally, be done linearly with all the software I've seen; this is a huge pain if you want to tack something onto the front of a 30-minute MPEG since the editor must still process the entire stream).

    Now, as for releasing the specs to QT4. I agree, it'd be a Good Thing, though you're extremely misguided in your apparent belief that QuickTime is only about movies (then again, you also thought it was a codec, so I shouldn't be too surprised at this). The major addition to QT4 was Sorenson, and that is not Apple's to Open-Source. Likewise for most of the codecs; I'm not sure Apple developed any of them.

    So get off your high horse. You wanted something that could edit MPEG's, I can tell, and I hate to burst your bubble but I doubt there's anything out there that can do that.

    Think of it this way, if it helps. MPEG is like a compiled application. It's smaller than the source, and it's faster to run. However, it's nearly impossible to edit in any meaningful way; you can do it if you're a true masochist but it's not worth the trouble.

    QuickTime movies, then, are like source code. It's much larger than the source for an app, and if you try running it (you could "run" source code with an interpreter, by the way; that's where I'm getting this) you'll get poorer performance than the compiled app. But source is much easier to change and work with than the compiled app. And you can still compile the app, if you want.

    Sure, Apple could Open-Source QuickTime. Now, your next challenge: convince them to do it. I wish you the best of luck.
  • It doesn't look like it can support analog directly. However, there's a way around that. Capture your movies as analog, then export them as DV streams. Then iMovie can import them easily (put them in the project folder), and all is right with the world.
  • Internet Explorer is free, can we port that to Linux?

    Apple is giving away a product, not code.
  • big dummy booger-head
  • And you mustn't forget all of the ATMs out there which are called MACs. (I use Evil Bank of America myself, but I doubt there's a significant difference...)
  • ***WARNING*** INCREDIBLY OFF-TOPIC POST ***WARNING***

    A program should never be an exact copy of its version on another platform. Different platforms have different design ideas and different standards. I've seen a few apps (namely CodeWarrior [metrowerks.com] (especially the Palm version, but also the Java version), QuickTime) that are awesome on the Mac get ported to Windows and become horrible. Why? The developers tried to make the program be the same exact way in Windows as it is on the Mac.

    That just isn't right. MacOS and Windows have different widgets. MacOS has one static menu bar - Windows has a menu bar for each window. MacOS uses the many different windows approach, Windows uses the one window approach. (MDI is an excellent idea, by the way. I love Opera [opera.com].) And so on.

    Now that I've begun... does anyone feel this way about Mozilla? It follows the Web standards beautifully, but I feel that the idea of using their own widgets isn't the best solution... Under MacOS, the window has its own menu bar, breaking the whole concept of the MacOS interface. Under Windows, the widgets don't respond well to common input, constantly lose focus, etc. I haven't tested it under Linux yet, since I don't use it a lot. I'll test it under MacOS X soon. I realize that the software isn't exactly in the final stages yet, but I loathe the thought that this maybe how it will stay.

    --

  • I might point out that MacOS X is MacOS number 10, as in coming after 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9, and that X is the Roman numeral for 10. Now, I realize that it may be hard for some people to understand, but I think the majority of people who use Macs, or are about to use Macs, have absolutely no idea what the X Windows System is and really don't care.

    Besides, I think X-Windows is so clumsy that any association with it would be negative and certainly not intentional.....and of course it contains the "no-no!" word "Windows" (shudder).. I feel the people behing the X-Windows project might have been more tasteful.

    And no, this is not a flamebait or a troll...just my 2.
  • No self-respecting nerd should use Windows....fool!
  • Hmm...I don't consider myself a zealot or an especial fanatic when it comes to Macs. However, I get very pissed off when I see all these people posting insulting remarks about the users of Apple hardware, based on stupid assumptions.

    As to Windows, if you don't agree with my statements above then you are clearly a bad judge of operating systems, and your knowledge of hardware is clearly inadequate.
  • I hate socialism. I hate communism. That shit is for losers who are so untalented and lazy that they are unable to get ahead in life and want to set up a system where people aren't judged by their merit.

    Only in America would having a vision be equal to socialism. I think you must have based your assumption on the fact that I detest ultra-capitalist monopolies...but that's just cause I'm a consumer...and consumers don't like monopolies, do they?....(I sure fucking hope not).

    Anyway, I believe that nerddom is not merely acquiring knowledge of information technology, but also a certain resentment and intolerance of "the system". Although I like quite a lot of "the system", at least as we have it back home in Iceland, where I live, I can see quite a bit of things that I'd want remedied in America.

    I know this is getting long-winded, so I'm bailing.

    Ciao
  • True nerds have a greater goal in life than the acquisition of wealth...or so I like to think.

    When it comes to Windows you have

    1)crummy tech
    2)shitty user interface
    3)a shitload of apps that crash on an extremely bad OS
    4)ultra-capitalist, stinking monopolist whoredom

    Using Windows merely underlines your lack of individuality, ignorance and mainstream-oriented thought process. No self-respecting nerd should use Windows.

    I run Linux on my <i>overclocked</i> G4 and use it among other things to write code in Perl and C. Now, tell me how this is lacking in nerddom?

    For me, Windows has always been the ultimate piece of dung when it comes to computers.

    As for sticking with a dying x86 processor, faulty ethernet cards and corrupted power supplies..., I buy good, expensive Apple hardware and am pleased with it.

    As to the MacOS, which is an outdated OS, hopefully Apple will do some sensible things with the new MacOS X. Still....if you don't mind not playing games I think you'll find that MacOS does not suffer from lack of applications.

    As to your suggestion that DOS is better....I don't think it even deserves a reply. I suspect you're one of those people who think they're computer nerds when all they know is how to configure BAT files....or whatever.
  • A lot of the stuff you want to do is available by using Quick Time pro, I think. You can exctract audio tracks from video footage, or vise versa. It will take lots of time(and extra work) and lots of free disk space(DV eats it up as you know), but it should give you more flexibility

    remymartin

    http://www.mklinux.org

  • Go away troll... Yes, one could say that Apple has a "monoploy" on PowerPC based desktops... But that's not due to strict contracts with Motorolla and IBM... it's due to lack of interest and incentive by other third parties that could make them. Over at OpenPPC.org, you can find all specs you'd ever want to know in order to make a PowerPC based machine, but it's been almost a year and still no one's stepped forward and started building them.

    As far as competetion with Adobe goes... There isn't any. It would be a different story if Apple was bundling FinalCut Pro with every mac it sold and hence attempting to "cut off the air supply" of a competitor, but that's not what they're doing. They're giving away free consumer level software that's obviously limited in functionality so as to drive interest in digital video products...

    Adobe's probably really happy because the more consumers play with iMovie, the more that will want companion products such as ATM, more fonts, and PhotoDeluxe. Maybe 5% of those people will get really into it... Maybe they'll upgrade to Final Cut Pro, since it's from apple and they think they'll be comfortable with it. Others may upgrade to Premiere. Either way, those people will be in the market for adobe's products, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects.

    So basically, what Apple's doing is seeding interest into the market. That's quite different than another company's full fledged and documented (read the emails introduced into evidence) to drive a potential competitor not only out of their market, but out of business.
  • Microsoft is indeed bundling a low-end video editting application in Windows ME, so far as all the reviews I've read of the beta releases say. But it's important to remember that Apple controls only 5% tops of the new computer market, whereas Microsoft controls 90%+ of the new computer market.

    Besides that if you're going to blast apple for what they're doing, why don't you blast all those pesky linux companies for including such things as: compilers, browsers, email clients, back up utilities, various window managers, web servers, proxy servers, various networking protocols, relational databases, etc, with all of their OS distributions? :) A lot of the sentiment around here goes that GUI's shouldn't be part of the OS, but where's the redhat distribution of Linux which is just a kernel with a few commands to allow for the installation of other products?

    It's one thing if a monopoly of 90% market share does something rather than a competitor with less than 5% of the market doing something similar.
  • Yes, I'm suprised to see this story on Slashdot. It's so fluffy it seems chosen to ilicit flames from people who don't like Apple.

    Apple could send a free CD with the Source Code (GPL'd) for an Intel/AMD version of Mac OS X (including Quick Time) to every person in the world and they would still get flamed on /.

    Apple was instrumental in making computers accessable to the masses, there is a core group of uber-geeks who don't like what they feel should be an exclusive club being opened up to everyone and will hate Apple for the rest of their lives for it.

    Once you recognise it as simply another form of the intolerance and bullying that is so previlant in our society you can deal with it in a healthy way.

  • >>I've used demos of this package and compared to
    >>professional packages like Premiere it really
    >>packs a punch.

    if MIcrosoft tried to do something like this they would be RAKED OVER THE COALS. Why is it OK for APPLE to release for free a product like this which will obviously damage the product sales for the rest of the companies in this market (not to mention them bundling it with certian models of macs).

    If you don't complain about this you have no right to complain about the whole IE/Netscape deal.
  • This is certainly not intended as a flame, but I don't know why people always insist on crying if something is posted here more than a day or so after the original story broke. There are a lot of us who don't regularly read the Mac sites but would still be interested in this. Personally, this article couldn't have come at a better time for me. I have a Mac that I use only for music recording/editing, but I just bought a digital camera [olympusamerica.com] that can take short Quicktime movies. Now with iMovie, I can edit those movies and add a few nifty enhancements, all for free! I'm very glad this was posted to slashdot, even if it was "old news."
  • Adobe Premire is to iMovie as Adobe Photoshop is to MacPaint on a Mac 512K. Just because they give away SimpleText also doesn't mean people aren't going to buy Microsoft Word for the Macintosh. Not really a Monopoly power issue in my opinion. Give away the basic tools, and if you need any kind of power, then buy a power tool. I think it's a good idea.


    _________

  • Send your criticisms to Apple...thats how the software is polished and improved, and polished and improved...
  • This has been floating around the mac community news sites for the last two weeks. (Since the 28th of April according to Apple.) Just to let you know.
  • It can't eat you!

    The end of this sentence is a fnord. Just like the end of this post..

    just what are you trying to say about apple?

    //Phizzy
  • I hardly think Adobe qualifies as a rival too Apple. Actually I think they have a fairly genial relationship. In fact with Apple releasing its dumbed down iMovie will probably inspire more people to move to Premiere when they want more features.

    So, yes I realize this is supposed to be ironic. But its not.

    Spyky
  • I think they mean 64 bytes. Considering that most "Web quality" video looks like its producers had only 48 bytes, iMovie's "Web quality" video should be pretty good.

    --

  • You can play with audio and video tracks in QuickTime Pro (just copy and paste to mix and match them) and then export from QuickTime Pro as DV and put the DV files into iMovie's DV folder to continue working with them. Or just export the audio tracks as AIFF from anything you can open in QuickTime Pro.

    As far as stability, I think iMovie is a Carbon app, so getting the newest CarbonLib from Apple (1.0.4 was just released) will probably help out. It's constantly being improved as Carbon and Mac OS X progress.

  • It was released last weekend I think? :P
    But, as I use premiere anyway, I still havent tried it.

  • when iMacs were first released there was no iMove software. It just started being inlcuded in the DV models which were 3 or 4 revisions after the original (I forget exactly)
  • the real requirements as listed by many mac sites, are those of, OS 8.6 64 Megs of RAM, and a G3 (even a beige will do)
  • As noted in other comments, iMovie only imports movies in DV format. And you can only get movies in DV format if you have a FireWire device, or if you have QuickTime Pro, which costs $30 from Apple. Why do you need QuickTime Pro? Because that allows you to export QuickTime movies in various formats, functionality which Apple removed from recent versions of the free QuickTime Player.

    But wait! There's another way, as noted [macintouch.com] on Macintouch [macintouch.com]. You can get an old version of the QuickTime player -- QuickTime 2.5 -- and convert QuickTime -> DV with that! Apple no longer distributes QT 2.5, but you should be able to find a copy floating around online (a quick search on Google [google.com] turned up the goods [open.org] for me), or you might have an old copy of QT on and old system CD or something.

    After doing the conversion, just put the DV file in the Media folder of your iMovie project, and you're all set!

  • Yes, I'm suprised to see this story on Slashdot. It's so fluffy it seems chosen to ilicit flames from people who don't like Apple.

    --
  • I like Apple. Yes, they do charge money for a few products- but they are a business. They make money- hence, business. They are, however, giving this to you for free. What did you do to earn it? Jack. That's right. Get over the fact that everything is not free. You probably get paid- right? Why shouldn't you just give your services away free? I mean really...that would be the /. thing to do. oh yeeeeaaahhhhh.... I remember the problem......you need to pay for broadband. Wait! But what if that was free too! That would be cool! everything should be free! For this, I offer only one piece of advice, thankyou Barney Gumble..."Go back to Russia!"
  • So? Apple isn't _obliged_ to _give_ you iMovie
    (or whatever) free of charge...
  • What did you do to earn it? Jack.

    No - you bought their new hardware.

  • lol... I was waiting for this one. You know you can upgrade the coco to 8Mb, and there is some speculation that it could be doubled yet again.
  • You are right on. Apple has married Kais Interfaces. I don't know if any of you guys have seen Conoma but iMovie is a total rip off of these flashy unintuitive UI. This doesn't bode well for Mac Os X which will probably scare away a lot of power users (I consider myself one) into the open arms of Linux. I already got Mol running. If only Adobe would port their aps and sell them with a usable Windows Manager, I would never look back.
    It is very said but unfortunately usability doesn't sell. Lickability does.
  • When you flame that Mac users are felines, do you mean "Mac" as in "Mac computers" or as in "Mac OS"? Remember, NetBSD and GNU/Linux do run on iMac computers.
  • Can it be ported to GNU/Linux now?
  • I ran IE under WINE, the colors were all wrong and the menu was not all there, but it actually ran!
  • the ability to edit digital video isn't much good unless you can get *at* the digital video so what you're really getting is another incentive to buy a Firewire (aka 1394 aka iLink) Mac

    You can make any QuickTime movie into a digital video stream with the QuickTime player.

  • Who was responsible for the decision to make iMovie arbitrarily unavailable? Apple.

    Who uses a proprietary, non-supported, non-compatible video format that "breaks the web" for a good few of us? Apple.

    --

    Fine so Apple fixes gaff number 1 by "releasing" iMovie. BFD. They made an arbitrary, dumb decision then they pretend to make better of it. Pure marketing BS from start to end. Who needs that?

    It's hardly a revolutionary move. On the other hand, if they had made iMovie Open Source OR switched to an Open, Compatible, Supported movie format OR released the specs to QT4, now THAT would have been news.

    Just my 2 cents.
  • (Ah, so you're the one who got MacDude....)

    I couldn't agree more. What standard should Apple have supported? Should they have adopted MicroSoft's propriatary standard or someone else's? Digital Video, is Digital Video. If you want to save it as PAL or whatever you can.

    It was brought up by someone esle in earlier that if you want professional editing, use Final Cut Pro (or whatever else is available on your platform of choice.), not FreeWare.

  • The key here, is that Apple's operating system is called MacOS 9, and not OS 9. I think some company was trying to sue Apple over the OS 9 name. I don't know what happened with that though.
  • 64 is a minumim. It's fine for web-quality, but you need more for higher quality.
    ___
    A requirement of creativity is that it contributes
    to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive.
  • Well you lazy fuck why don't YOU work on a video editor??? And if you don't have the knolege, the ***gasp, this is the hardest thing for you open source communists to swallow* BUY a video editor. And if you hate that the only decent editor you can is on a Windows or Mac machine, the TOO FUCKING BAD.
  • That is why people who are professional use FINAL CUT and AFTER effects
  • Yeah, this is a couple weeks old, but one of the reasons I read /. is the breadth of coverage in areas that I don't always have time to follow.
    The Apple site lists some heavy requirements but myself and others have run it on a variety of configurations. Any G3 (upgrade cards included) with 64Megs can run the software adequately.
    The package was designed simply to allow home video to be edited and spruced up for either transfer back to VHS or DVD, or in some cases, Internet transmission.
  • Yup, Apple was pretty much forced to give the software away. They had all sorts of advertising distributed showing G4s and PowerBooks with a video camera, and text informing people that they could edit home movies with their Firewire macs.

    Problem was, they couldn't. At least not without the software. Apple has gotten in trouble before with advertising claims, so this time, they decided to play it clean and give the software away.
  • When the imacs were first released Apple needed more than a pretty box to entice customers, and products like this were a good incentive to go out and get a new mac. But the imac has shown that it sells and so it seems pretty fair that they release software like imovie, because it isn't going to hurt imac sales at all.
  • This was a no brainer for Apple to release iMovie for free for everyone because it was easy to do, and it helps build up the consumer market with people who don't necessarily have i-macs. Although it's a nice product..it's still no Adobe Premiere or After Effects. Just like the free program Gimp can do a lot of things Photoshop can do... it's still not as robost as Photoshop or replaces it. As far as Apple's reponsiveness, I would say ask Mac game developers how responsive Apple has been in the past. They've been banging their heads into the wall trying to get Apple to help make the game market and development stronger on the Mac side...personally I haven't seen much change..
  • Then why don't some of you download it, reverse engineer it and make the source code available for free?
  • There's an old proverb; SAVE EARLY! SAVE OFTEN!
  • The difference is that Apple is not bundling this program with the operating system. The problem with Netscape/IE wasn't so much that IE was free.. It was that IE was bundled with every computer that ran later versions of Windows 95 and all version of windows 98 (as well as NT/2000). Why would someone who isn't very computer literate download and install netscape when they already have a web browser pre-installed?
  • There are two that come to mind - but both are for animation of 3d graphics, not for real video per se. The good parts is that they're decent packages, so sometimes you can't tell the difference.

    One is called blender, and the other is called 'moonlight'. Blender is free as in beer only, and I'm not sure about moonlight.

  • This wasn't so much altruism on Apple's part as practicality.

    The software is easily availiable everywhere on the net, their automated update isn't particularly good at discerning Mac models (and can be fooled easily if someone cared) and it's not like the software can be used on anything but Apple hardware anyway.

    Finally, the ability to edit digital video isn't much good unless you can get *at* the digital video so what you're really getting is another incentive to buy a Firewire (aka 1394 aka iLink) Mac.*

    So they've eliminated the qualifier-hassle and given folks more reasons to buy their Mac's, particularly ones with Firewire. This is much like when they shipped the original Macs with a software suite (MacWrite, MacPaint, etc.) to show off their capabilities.

    Lastly - it's not entirely clear that Apple *wanted* to give away the software or it just wasn't able to get the qualifiers to work.

    -- Michael

    *Trust me, if you really just want to edit down the family video so they look less like a 'Cops' episode and more like folks enjoying themselves you'll want onboard Firewire.
  • Where will I get 64 megs for my Coco 3?

  • I've demoed iMovie for some 10 consecutive weekends.. Even if we leave the machines on during the weeks, we have _all_ the material we make during the weekends left. No corrupt files and close to 8 GB of filmed data.

    This in om a standard iMac DV, 10 GB HD and 64 MB RAM. We didn't have to reinstall anything, and a Mac standing alone in any store is a sitting duck for malicious PC-using teenagers.

    If you want to separate the audio från the video, that's easily done in the QT Player. And.. Digital Video do take a lot of space on your hard drive.. there's no way getting around that problem. 10 GB (inkl OS and other programs) is sufficient for close to half an hour of film, and that's about 15 times as much as one should when you edit.

    Any sane person will see that editing 2 minutes of film at once is too much. A clip shouldn't last longer than about 10 secs anyway. And when you're done with the clip you just store it away on you camcorder again.

    Those 8 GB of film we had.. I tried to mount it in iMovie at one time.. worked great.. no problems! 64 MB of RAM is enough. More clips doesn't seem to effect the RAM-usage att all. But.. i severely impared the editing process with hundreds of clips, and that's why it's silly to try to edit 15 mins of film at once.. That's just plain dumb.

    iMovie is very competent if you know what you're doing. But there's no question about iMovie being short of features. But again.. If people use AppleWorks (or Paint and VX) for editing their photos.. iMovie is more than enough for the average user.

    - Henrik
  • I currently own a beige G3, and while it was fine for its time, it certainly could use an upgrade. I really wanted to try iMovie, but I didn't want to buy an iMac due to its limited expandability and the small monitor it has (my beige system has a 19" Sony).

    Now I can have my cake and eat it too - I can get a G4/500 or thereabouts, AND get to play around with iMovie for free. That's a great deal, since I tried out iMovie in the store and was pretty impressed. Before this, I might have bought a much cheaper iMac just so I could play with iMovie; now I'll probably buy a G4 at double the price.

    Of course I don't think I'll buy the G4 until MacOS X comes out, so I can have a fully MacOS X ready computer without the tiresome trouble of upgrading. I wonder how many people like me there are; it might pay to buy Apple stock and watch it take off when people buy their new MacOS X toys.

    D

    ----
  • True, but the beige system feels a shade poky nowadays. Time to upgrade (well, at least when MacOS X comes out, the perfect excuse);

    D

    ----
  • I downloaded Broadcast 2000 a while back and it was looking pretty Promising - Try:
    http://slashdot.org/articles/00/01/10/1740256.sh tml
    and:
    http://heroine.linuxave.net/bcast2000.html

    Cheers -
    Jim in Tokyo

  • Re:fnord? (Score:2)

    by / ( 33804 )
    From the Jargon File [tuxedo.org]:

    fnord n.

    [from the "Illuminatus Trilogy"] 1. A word used in email and news postings to tag utterances as surrealist mind-play or humor, esp. in connection with Discordianism and elaborate conspiracy theories. "I heard that David Koresh is sharing an apartment in Argentina with Hitler. (Fnord.)" "Where can I fnord get the Principia Discordia from?" 2. A metasyntactic variable, commonly used by hackers with ties to Discordianism or the Church of the SubGenius.
  • iMovie really only reads DV streams, because it's designed for turning raw footage from a DV camera into finished, exportable work. It is possible to get old footage into DV format without having a Firewire port (usually with some small loss, remember that DV is 4:2:2 compressed). There's discussion on the Mac and DV sites on how to do that.

    Most of the limitations of iMovie are there to keep it simple to use for people who don't want to learn all the background of video editing (especially traditional analog). You can probably do what you're looking for with the combination of the "Quicktime Pro" upgrade and iMovie, but to really get into professional editing you still need Final Cut Pro. For Apple to release iMovie for free is probably as much a loss leader for upgrades to QTPro and FCP as anything else. Both packages are extremely powerful, though, and pretty much kick butt on Premiere, After Effects, or anything else that's been available in the past (according to a friend of mine who runs a University video lab, anyway).

  • I (Score:2)

    by Money__ ( 87045 )
    II can use my Icamcorder to make Imovies of my Ikids playing in the Iplayground during Irecess and send my Imovie to my Ifriends and Ifamily.

    Iee-yiiee-yiiee
    ___



  • It's not the same thing.

    In this case, Apple is not leaning on OEMs saying if they make an agreement with Adobe to sell Premier then they'll have to pay more for the Mac OS license. There are no Mac OEMs. That whole trial [theregister.co.uk] had little to do with Microsoft giving IE away for free. It had everything to do with Microsoft leveraging its monopoly to strongarm its partners into making it difficult for Netscape to sell its products.

    Beyond that, iMovie does not compete with Premier, Final Cut Pro, or Avid. This is an entry-level product that will likely result in increased sales of those other products due to the number of consumers introduced to digital video editing.



    Seth
  • The iMovie requirements are over blown; any computer with OS 8.6 or higher and 64 megs of RAM will work just fine; iMovie also supports (most) FireWire PCI cards and Ethernet.

  • Interface Issues (Score:3)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Sunday May 07, 2000 @07:25AM (#1086866) Homepage
    What is it with Apple these days (and every other software manufacturer, for that matter)? The screenshots of this program, except for the handle Apple menu bar at the top, look like they could've been taken on any system. Why can't software manufacturers design programs that actually use the interface of the system they're being used on? Why does a Macintosh program have to look like a strange new foreign interface and why does Microsoft's new Media Player have to look like a retarded Pocket PC or something? This is especially disconcerting coming from Apple, which has made great headway in the designs of consisten UIs that make people feel at ease. I do not want to have to learn a whole new set of of UI images, methods, and layouts every time I open up a new program.

    Sheesh.
  • Credits are created almost instantly if you feed a properly formatted text file directly into QuickTime. You can then take the resulting movie and drop it into your project in under a minute, including setting fancy effects.

    As to crashing while MacOS 9.04 isn't going to set records for stability it's probably the most stable MacOS in years (and more stable then Win9x.) I'd suggest taking a look into your settings and see if there's not something odd someplace (patched a few too many traps in the system with 3rd party add-ons is most common.)

    You'll also learn to save before doing anything dramatic with any editing package on any platform. This will become second nature to you eventually. Indeed I've seen professionials who freak out if they can't do their usual cycle of save-sip coffee-plan the next step-resume (not naming names.)

    -- Michael
  • "you need OS9 and at least 64 megs of RAM, unless you're doing Web quality video, in which case 64 is fine."

    Huh? Do you need 64 or 64?

  • See Macintouch (Score:3)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Sunday May 07, 2000 @04:57AM (#1086869)
    2 week old news. Actually it works with System 8.6 or later. There is a report with user experiences on Macintouch [macintouch.com], including a lot of hardware compatability data.

  • I do a lot of video editing work at school, and have done it all with an analog editing setup. We finally got some digital equipment (1 Sony digital-8 camera and 2 iMacs with iMovie). When I started using iMovie, I thought it was a God-send: it was so easy to use. When I dove deeper into it, though, I found out that it lacked a few essential things that can be done with relative ease on the analog setup we had:

    --Dubbing video over another video segment and keeping the original audio.
    --Taking audio only from the video footage.

    Also, the sound effects that it has don't move with the movie track when you add another clip, and they're had to put back into the right place. The worst, however, is that iMovie has crashed several times, and it doesn't haev an auto-save feature. You lose EVERYTHING since your last save, which makes things time consuming. Adding credits can take upwards of 15 minutes, and if you lose that, a lot of time is wasted.

    Just my 2 Euros.
    ~AgentRavyn
    ___
    A requirement of creativity is that it contributes
    to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive.

  • Re:iMovie's lack of features (Score:4)

    by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 ) on Sunday May 07, 2000 @04:46AM (#1086871)
    Thats because it's the consumer version.

    It's a free package meant to get people into doing cheap and quick videos for friends and family.

    Sounds like you want Final Cut Pro or Premire.

  • iMovie punches? Not quite (Score:4)

    by drix ( 4602 ) on Sunday May 07, 2000 @01:30PM (#1086872) Homepage
    I've used demos of this package and compared to professional packages like Premiere it really packs a punch.

    Oh I heartily disagree. iMovie really is missing some crucial functions that any good video editing app shouldn't be without. Namely, there is very little in the way of audio manipulation. You can't separate the audio and video tracks of a clip, period. This might sound like an advanced feature but you'll be surprised how much you wish it was there even when making simple vacation movies for the family (I did).

    Memory managment is horrid; during our last project our 15 minute short movie gobbled so much RAM and hard drive space (and we have 128mb) that it ended up literally frying the computer; I had to reinstall MacOS because iMovie had thrashed some system files. This is just not cool.

    I think iMovie is a neat little app, but it doesn't leave you very much leeway in the editing process. In other words, you can create a good movie, but you have to time your shots just right and be sure that the audio is just as you want when you are actually filming. There isn't much in the way of dubbing and clip editing to help you out.

    On a related note, what is everyone's experience with FinalCut Pro. I was using Premiere for a while, but on Mac it's more like an ugly port of a PC app than a good package. The DV support in Premiere is horrid unless I'm using it completely wrong. What do people have to say about FinalCut on iMac?

    --

  • Re:Apple should not be praised for this. (Score:4)

    by Macdude ( 23507 ) on Sunday May 07, 2000 @06:43AM (#1086873)
    switched to an Open, Compatible, Supported movie format

    What part of a DV stream do you consider closed, incompatible, and unsupported?

    iMovie is designed to edit DV Video, you can convert the finished product to QuickTime but you can also convert it to MPEG, VHS or whatever you want.

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